Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This article describes what is in retrospect a remarkable turn of events: in the digital world, private enterprise has realized the Marxist ideal, the elimination of private property. "You do not own your Amazon Kindle books... You do not own the music you stream... You don't own the movies you watch... You (likely) do not own the software you use (unless it's open source);... you (likely) do not own the operating system that powers your computer; you've paid for a license there as well. And increasingly, there are restrictions with what you can do with the computer hardware as well as the software that you might think is yours because it is in your possession." This is something, writes Audrey Watters, that we must fight against. "To own is to possess. To own is to have authority and control. To own is to acknowledge. It implies a responsibility."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 07:18 a.m.

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